Commencement Archive

Commencement Address 2004

Judy Woodruff, May 16, 2004

Judy Woodruff, CNN anchor and senior correspondent, was the speaker
and an honorary degree recipient at Smith College's 126th commencement ceremony on Sunday, May
16.

President Christ, Provost Bourque, distinguished faculty, trustees,
family and friends, and especially members of the Smith College Class of 2004: What a great honor
to be here on this special occasion at this special institution.

It is remarkable to be in this collection of honorees today: Rita
Colwell, Thelma Golden and Patricia Williams. My inclusion is testimony that affirmative action
is alive and well in Northampton.

I am aware of the history of today, your earlier commencement speakers:
John F. Kennedy, Alistair Cooke, Walter Lippman and Edward R. Murrow. It took Smith 40 years to
have a woman commencement speaker, but you have more than made up for lost time with, among others,
Maya Angelou, Marian Wright Edelman and last year, Madeleine Albright. What an honor to be on such
a list.

And what an honor to speak at commencement as Smith graduates the
United States’ first all-female class of engineers. Let’s give the 20 graduates of
the Picker Engineering Program a special round of applause.

I will make one commitment: this will not be the longest commencement
speech ever given. Research shows that that was a six-hour address given in the 19th century at
Harvard — the first half was in Latin, the final three hours in Greek. Then the graduates were
given a test.

I do feel an affinity for Smith. I have known so many of your distinguished
alumnae over the years who have made such enormous contributions in politics and journalism.

I also have a very personal connection: Zhengli Zhu, a Smith graduate
of the class of 1998. She came with me today, along with her mother, who is visiting from Shanghai.

At the risk of embarrassing her, I’m going to tell you a bit
about Li-Li, whom we consider our Chinese daughter. She was an exchange student at the Sidwell
Friends School in Washington more than ten years ago when she stayed with us for a semester. We
had no idea she would become family: years later when she was married in the States my husband
gave her away. But one of the enabling bonds on that journey was going through the college admissions
process with this exceptionally bright young Chinese woman. That was when we first knew Smith was
special.

She had a distinguished four years here. An economics major, she landed
a great job with one of the prestigious Wall Street investment banking houses; she spent the next
two years working 110 to 115 hours a week. A life of abundant riches was to follow after this two-year
apprenticeship; pretty heady stuff for the middle-class daughter of a Shanghai accountant and schoolteacher.

I happened to know the CEO of that firm, and he reported that Li-Li
was a treasure with an unlimited future. Then, at the end of those two years she did the unexpected:
she tossed aside a lucrative job offer to follow in her mother’s footsteps and teach school.

So every school day for the past three years she has commuted from
Jersey City to the Bronx — three hours daily. Like her peers, she is evaluated every year; she
receives the highest grades for every category of teaching.

Why did she do this? Some of her former colleagues on Wall Street
still ask her why. When I asked, she spoke of the nobility of teaching. But she also cited her
Smith experience; the "intellectual inspiration and influence" of her professors: "I
kept thinking of them as my role models."

Smith, this young Chinese woman explained, gave her confidence: confidence
that she could adapt and compete in a new land; certainly confidence that she could do a job every
bit as well, indeed better, than most men; and confidence to go against the grain.

This is not a recruiting speech for the National Education Association,
although I hope some of you answer that noble calling. I also hope some of you go into investment
banking; for those of you who do, on behalf of President Christ and the Smith trustees, always
remember your alma mater!

But what Li-Li’s story suggests, I believe, is that your intellectual/moral
compass has been finely honed during your four years here. Follow it.

In talking with several of you these past few weeks, this is strikingly
evident: Meghan Taugher told me that Smith "has developed us as leaders.…We will do
a lot of things." Nicole Berkes appreciates that she has "learned to think out of the
box." Sienna Hunter-Cuyjet recalls the "homophobia and racial and anti-Arab sentiments
after 9/11" that your class came together to deal with. In that vein, your sophomore year,
as Liz Liedel says, was a time "bracketed by tragedy." She and others spoke of the leadership
example set that difficult year by acting President John Connolly.

Because of all this, and more, you are young women ready to encounter
choices and make decisions.

That does remind me of the sage counsel of another commencement speaker,
Woody Allen. "More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads," he told those
graduates. "One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction.
Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

The choices actually are much better, but let’s talk for a moment
about some of the conundrums you will encounter.
The world you are about to traverse is much smaller than the one your parents entered. You are
as likely to spend time in Frankfurt, Germany, as in Kentucky, or in Athens, Greece, rather than
Georgia.

We are a far more globally interdependent economy and — with a few
exceptions — this has been good. Smith has prepared you; more than half of you studied abroad
and some 7 percent of you are from other countries.

Moreover, economically, politically, militarily and socially, America
is the world’s leader, the trendsetter. American products and American culture are omnipresent.

Yet, at the same time, American policy, and even Americans, are increasingly
reviled around the globe. America, not terrorism, too often is seen as the greatest threat to world
peace.

In moderate Arab countries, supposedly our allies, Osama Bin Laden,
a demonstrable murderer, is more popular than George W. Bush; a recent Pew study found the percentage
of people in Muslim countries who feel that suicide bombings are justified, has soared.

American cannot lead — and you will have more difficulty in playing
a prominent role in any international field you pursue — if this persists. A Field-of-Dreams international
policy — do it and they will follow, irrespective of what the people believe — is a fantasy.

Allow me two asides. One, do not let my profession elude its responsibilities:
the number of foreign correspondents on the three commercial networks has been cut in half over
the past couple of decades and on September 11, 2001, there was not a single CBS, ABC or NBC correspondent
in a predominately Muslim country; and then we wonder why we don’t understand one another.

Also, whatever your views on the Iraqi war, don’t make the mistakes
that were made in Vietnam, where we condemned the warriors as well as the war. This way may prove
to be a tragic mistake, as Vietnam did. But we should honor those brave young men and women —
most from working-class families — who are serving their country in uniform.

Another crossroads of sorts revolves around the notion that you will
have much to celebrate and worlds to conquer. Both true. There are more opportunities today than
ever. Seize them. Have fun too.

When I was sitting in your shoes more than three decades ago about
to leave Duke University, I never dreamed that I would interview presidents and prime ministers,
travel the world covering major stories, report on every major presidential election for more than
a generation, participate in national debates, and, in a tragic vein, be standing 15 feet away
when the president of the United States was shot.

It has been heady stuff. I have been very fortunate.

But also know your heart will be broken. Mine has been in ways large
and small. I have lost assignments, I have been beaten on stories, I have made mistakes — and
that hurts, because in my business they are usually public. More important, I also have a severely
disabled child.

What Smith has prepared you for — and what I believe Duke helped
do for me — was to instill or sharpen the fiber, the resiliency, the courage to bounce back from
those setbacks. But setbacks there will be.

For those of you so inclined, there’s the issue of combining
career and family. Can you do it? Of course. Women have been doing it for centuries and, thanks
to the feminist movement, there are more possibilities for you today. Over the past 40 years, women
have gone from making 59 percent of what men make to 77 percent; although that’s welcome,
it is also unacceptable.

Yet in the past few years, corporations and other institutions are
making it more difficult, cutting back on flex-time and job-sharing and other arrangements that
disproportionately help working mothers. The first child today lowers earnings for a mother by
7.5 percent; the second child by another 8 percent. That is unacceptable.

It also is unacceptable that our family and medical leave policies
are so limited; this imposes a special burden on lower- and middle-income working-class families;
over three-quarters of low-wage workers have no paid sick leave. These burdens fall heaviest on
women.

Don’t accept these trends. Use your voice and the skills you
acquired here to change them.

One other note to those who wish to combine career and family: I highly
recommend it. I have been married to the man I love for almost a quarter century, and we are blessed
with three marvelous children — well, a small caveat, two are teenagers. My family is the best
thing that ever happened to me. But there is one constant: I am tired every day of my life. You
will be too.

Finally, there is the matter of service to others; that has been a
way of life at Smith. I am sure that each of you envisions continuing involvement with people and
communities.

For most of you it will be tougher than you think today. There will
be distractions, competing claims, job demands, family pursuits, the need to find some free personal
time.

But find time. You know — much better than do the troglodytes of
my generation — the value of technology to enrich our lives. But the information highway has never
tutored an underprivileged young child, taken meals-on-wheels to an infirm senior citizen, transported
people with disabilities, or played ball or watched a movie with an at-risk teenager. Those experiences
enrich your lives too; they fashion your character, which forms your destiny.

You have enjoyed special privileges and opportunities. It was at another
commencement almost 40 years ago when Robert F. Kennedy told Berkeley graduates: "You can
use your privileges and opportunity to seek purely personal pleasure and gain. But history will
judge you, and as the years pass you will judge yourself, by the extent to which you have used
your gifts to lighten and to enrich the lives of your fellow beings."

You, more than most college graduates, should appreciate that. It
was the dream of Sophia Smith that with this college and its alumnae "[women’s] wrongs
will be redressed, their wages adjusted, their weight of influence in reforming the evils of society
will be greatly increased…their power for good…incalculably enlarged."

I celebrate with you on this great achievement culminating in today.
And I am a little envious of the grand challenges and choices ahead of you. Before you start, one
final request: remember the words of Mark Twain, who said when he was 14, "my father was so
ignorant that I could hardly stand to have [him] around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished
at how much the old man had learned...."

When this ceremony is over, go to your parents, who are so proud of
you, even tell them how much they have learned as you thank them for their support and sacrifice.
Then give them a big hug.